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‘Well, would you believe it?’ said Ronan Kelly. ‘You’ve put me right off me bacon sangridge.’

‘I’m sorry about that, but the fault is entirely yours, and what you choose to do now is entirely up to you. If you help me, I’ll make sure that you get the credit for it when it comes to any disciplinary proceedings, which it will. It may even come to criminal proceedings.’

‘We’re not the only ones!’ Billy Daly protested.

‘Will you shut the feck up!’ Ronan Kelly snapped at him.

‘I’m aware of that, too,’ said Katie. ‘Meanwhile, what are you going to do? Are you going to assist me in this, or not? If you say no, you’re not, then I’m going directly to Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy and reporting you.’

Both gardaí were silent for a moment, and then Ronan Kelly said, ‘Why don’t we just warn Dessie that this black bird is out to get him, like?’

‘Because he’ll start to take precautionary measures, such as walking around with a bodyguard, and changing his daily routines, and maybe carrying a firearm.’

‘So? At least he won’t get his hands chopped off and his head blown to bits.’

‘What do you think I’m trying to do, Garda Kelly? I’m trying to catch this Angel of Revenge, but if Mister Dessie makes it obvious that he knows he’s next on her list, she’s going to keep well away, isn’t she? She needs time to do the things she does to her victims, time and seclusion. She follows her victims very closely. She won’t attempt to go for Mister Dessie if she sees that he’s always going to have some minder with him.’

‘How can you be so sure that he’s next on her list?’ asked Billy Daly. ‘There’s
dozens
of other pimps around the city, aren’t there? Jesus – I could count them on the fingers of three hands.’

‘Of course I can’t be one hundred per cent certain,’ Katie admitted. ‘But it was Bula who made me believe that it was highly likely. Mawakiya and Dumitrescu, they were both pimps, yes, but Bula was nothing more than a gofer. All that the three of them had in common was that they worked for Michael Gerrety, handling girls for him. There’s only one surviving person who does that for him, and that’s Mister Dessie.’

‘Michael’s going to hit the fecking roof if this all comes out,’ said Ronan Kelly, shaking his head. ‘I don’t honestly know what I’m the scareder of, losing my job or Michael losing his rag with me.’

Katie opened the car door and a warm breeze blew in, smelling of river. ‘I’m going to meet Acting Superintendent Molloy now. Text me as soon as you find out where Mister Dessie is, and what he’s doing. Copy the text to Detective Sergeant ó Nuallán. She knows all about this, and my meeting you here, and if I’m otherwise engaged she can handle any crisis that might come up.’

Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy was talking on the phone when Katie knocked at his open office door. He beckoned her in and then he covered the receiver with his hand and said, ‘The door. Close it, would you, Katie?’

Katie thought, ‘Close it would you,
please
,
Katie’ would have been appreciated, but she closed it anyway and sat down next to his desk. She looked around the office while he was talking and noticed that he had already put up photographs of himself shaking hands with various politicians, like Alan Shatter the justice minister and Kathleen Lynch TD, and local dignitaries like the mayor of Limerick, as well as his awards and his certificates.

Propped up in the corner next to the bookcase there was a leather bag of golf clubs.

‘Pat – that’s the way we’re going to be doing it, whether you like it or not,’ Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy was saying on the phone. ‘No, Pat.
No
, boy! Absolutely not. I told you before. All right, then. Good. I’ll talk to you later so.’

He hung up the phone and scribbled some notes on the pad in front of him. It was only then that he looked up at Katie and gave her a questioning look as if he couldn’t understand what she was doing here.

‘Good morning, Bryan,’ said Katie. ‘I see you’re making yourself at home.’

Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy ignored that remark. ‘I saw the appeal you put out on the TV this morning. It’s a pity I wasn’t afforded the courtesy of vetting it myself before it went out.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I did ask Declan O’Donoghue to make sure you saw it.’

‘Well, there must have been a failure in communication. As it was, I wasn’t at all keen on the assumption that these murders are connected to the sex trade. The sex trade is a very prickly issue, both legally and politically, and it’s not our job to make moral judgements. We’re a police force, not some band of hymn-singing evangelists.’

Katie laid a blue manila folder down on his desk. ‘Dr O’Brien tells me that he won’t complete his post mortem on the third victim until later today, if not tomorrow, and the Technical Bureau haven’t yet sent me their final report on the Mutton Lane scene. But this should get you up to date on all three homicides – forensics, autopsies, witness statements and CCTV printouts. I think you’ll find from what’s in here that the connection to the sex trade is undeniable.’

Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy reached over and took the folder, but didn’t open it. ‘Dermot told me that you weren’t one to jump to conclusions. Meticulous, that’s what he said you were.’

‘Two of the victims were pimps and the third was an errand boy for the biggest organized prostitution racket in Cork. I hardly think I’m jumping to conclusions.’

‘It’s a question of
attitude
, Katie. We can’t be seen to be prejudiced.’

‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at. I’m not at all prejudiced. I’m just making a logical assessment of the evidence. If two butchers and a butcher’s boy were murdered, you’d begin to suspect that their killings were connected to the meat trade, wouldn’t you?’

Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy stood up and walked over to the window. ‘Times are changing, Katie. Public opinion is changing. The Garda have to be responsive to that.’

Katie said nothing, but waited for him to continue. She could sense that he was building up to making some important announcement, but one that he didn’t think she was going to like. He kept his back to her, and both of his hands in his pockets, juggling with his loose change.

‘I might as well tell you now. I’m cancelling Operation Rocker,’ he said.

‘You’re
what
?’

‘I’m cancelling Operation Rocker. In my opinion, it’s outdated and misguided, and it’s a waste of our precious resources. The chances of successful prosecutions are next to nil, and I believe that it will cause serious damage to our relationship with the sex-working community.’

Katie was breathless. ‘Bryan – do you know how many months of surveillance have gone into this operation? Do you know how many women have put themselves at risk to give us witness statements? You talk about the “sex-working community”, but do you have
any
idea how many of those women have been illegally trafficked, and have been forcibly drugged, or physically threatened, or both? Do you know how many of them are not even old enough to leave school, let alone work as prostitutes?’

Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy turned around, although he kept his hands in his pockets. ‘I’m perfectly aware of the statistics, Katie. I went through all of the reports with Dermot yesterday before he left. Yes – there are some women who are working in the sex trade less than willingly, but what choices do they have? If they didn’t do that, they’d be destitute, and we’d either have to deport them back to Africa or Eastern Europe for a life of even greater destitution, or else we’d have to pay them benefits at considerable cost to the Irish taxpayer, who is burdened enough as it is, God knows.’

‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this,’ said Katie.

‘That’s because you’re looking at it from a woman’s point of view. You’re still a
bangharda
, Katie. It’s the church’s job to take care of morality, not ours. It’s our job to protect people, regardless of who they are or what they’re up to, and the best way to protect women in the sex trade is to make sure that it’s all carried out in the open. If prostitutes have responsible organizers who give them somewhere safe to live and take care of their welfare, surely that’s better than seeing them back on the streets.’

‘“Responsible organizers”? Are you messing? Which “responsible organizers”? Men like Mânios Dumitrescu and Johnny-G and Terence Chokwu and Charlie O’Reilly? Men like Michael Gerrety?’

‘Michael Gerrety for one deserves a lot more leeway. His Green Light campaign has been given considerable support from charities and social workers and from sex workers themselves. He’s trying hard to take the stigma out of sex work, and from our point of view that can only be helpful. It means less women forced into prostitution. It means less violence and fewer sexually transmitted diseases. People will always sell and buy sex, no matter what we do. If we harass men like Michael Gerrety, Katie, we’ll only succeed in driving the sex trade back underground, where it’s so much harder to keep an eye on it.’

Katie said, ‘You really believe that?’

‘Yes, I do. And that’s why I’m cancelling Operation Rocker.’

Katie stood up. ‘I’ll leave that file with you, anyway. I have at least twenty more major cases to go over with you, but I think we can leave them till Monday.’

‘I’m quite prepared to go over them now. The sooner I catch up, the better.’

‘Well, I agree, but you’ve just dropped a bombshell on me and I need to go away and think about it.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re
upset
? This is purely a policy decision, Katie, nothing to do with personal feelings.’

‘It’s a policy decision that I totally disagree with, Bryan. Michael Gerrety is a conniving manipulative bully and a con man, and if you’re seriously talking about letting him carry out his sex business unmolested, then you’re more of a chauvinistic meb than I thought you were.’

Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy stood with his mouth open, his face growing gradually redder. For a split second, Katie thought that he was going to shout at her. Then, however, he took his hands out of his pockets and started clapping her, slow and mocking.

‘Good girl! Well done! If there’s one thing I like, it’s a woman who’s brave enough to speak her mind, even if it is all rubbish!

He stopped clapping and came up to her, taking hold of her elbow, although she immediately twisted it away.

‘I can understand that you’re angry and disappointed, Katie. I would be, too, if I was you. So, yes, let’s leave the rest of the catching up until Monday. You can go home now and vent your spleen on some hoovering, or washing the curtains, or some such. I’ll see you when you’ve thought about what I’ve said, and realized the sense of it.’

Katie took a deep breath, opened the door and left the office without saying anything. She was so angry that she could have kicked the wall as she walked along the corridor. She was so angry that she could have burst into tears. But she did neither. Acting Chief Superintendent Molloy had called her a
bangharda
,
which was the outdated name for a female garda, and the last thing she wanted to do was give him the satisfaction of proving him right.

She met Eugene Ó Béara in The Ovens in Oliver Plunkett Street. He was sitting in a booth in the far corner of the bar with a half-finished pint of Guinness in front of him, talking to a shaven-headed young man in a green polo shirt. Eugene Ó Béara himself hadn’t changed at all since Katie had last met him, although his curly hair, once chestnut, was now almost completely grey, and badly in need of a trim. He reminded Katie of Dylan Thomas, the poet, because even at the age of forty he had the face of a very spoiled baby.

He was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt that had seen better days and a Blackpool GAA tie. As Katie came across the bar he lifted his left wrist and peered down at his large Rolex wristwatch.

‘Sorry I’m a little late,’ said Katie.

‘Budge up, Micky,’ said Eugene. ‘Let the lady sit down.’

The shaven-headed young man shifted himself along the bench seat and Katie sat down beside him.

‘Detective Superintendent Maguire, this is Micky Corcoran. Micky, this is the celebrated Katie Maguire, the bane of all wrongdoers everywhere. You’ll be joining us in a scoop, detective superintendent, especially since you’ll be treating us?’

‘I’ll just have a Finches rasa,’ said Katie. She took a twenty-euro note out of her purse and handed it over. ‘You two have whatever you want.’

Micky Corcoran took the note and stood up. He had acne-pitted cheeks and a long pointed nose and two silver studs in his left earlobe. As he went to fetch the drinks he gave Katie a sideways look over his shoulder and smirked at her, as if there was something about her that amused him.

‘Why is it that whenever the shades want to know anything about illegally acquired weapons they always come to me?’ asked Eugene. ‘Those days are over now. The last thing I blew up was a balloon for my daughter’s birthday party. We have beaten our AK-47s into ploughshares and our mortars into pruning hooks.’

‘Oh yes, and pigs might recite the Lord’s Prayer.’

Eugene’s eyes narrowed. ‘I have the distinct feeling that you’re a little out of sorts today for some reason.’

‘Well, your distinct feeling is quite correct, but it has nothing at all to do with the business in hand.’

‘If somebody’s upset you, detective superintendent, I have plenty of friends who could soften their cough.’

‘Like I told you on the phone, I’m only interested in one sort of weapon. It’s a small handgun that can fire shotgun shells. From what our witness has told us about it, it can only fire one round at a time.’

Micky Corcoran came back with the drinks. He gave Katie a glass with two drinking straws in it, as well as her bottle of raspberry cordial. ‘I thought you’d want to drink it civilized, like.’

‘Micky will know about your gun,’ said Eugene. ‘Micky, do you know of a handgun that can take shotgun shells, but it’s only a single shooter?’

Micky swigged Satzenbrau lager out of the bottle. ‘Yeah, for sure,’ he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘That’ll be your Pocket Shotgun. It’s made by Heizer Defense in America and it only went on sale at the end of 2013, so there’s not too many of them around yet. It’s made of stainless steel or titanium but it’s so fecking small that you can carry it in the pocket of your cax and nobody would even guess you’d got it on you. The only trouble is the recoil. Because it’s so small it’s got a kick like a fecking donkey.’